Saturday, November 24, 2012

Focusing on the Subject

Having had some successful nights observing and taking pictures I feel more relaxed setting up my equipment. This is evident as I have now found how to focus my ep's when used in the projector.

As the moon was bright I thought I'd try Jupiter first. These pictures are taken at 150X mag, the highest I can go with my current equipment, and shows a moon, top middle, during transit across the planet. That's right, barely a week ago I was pleased I had cloud bands now I have a moon transit. This is evidence of how much can be achieved in a short space of time if you just practice. I have checked a few Stellarium and the Jupiters moon site (a link to this is on the right hand side of this page) and can't see that it was one of the major moons so I'll ask the question on the net and get back to you on that.

I also thought I'd take some movies and have a go at stacking. What I have found is that my pc struggles with over 100 allignment points over 500 frames. I also found that it takes a long time and my results were worse than the video. It's a complex process trying to tell Registax which frames to use but again I will persevere and keep trying.

This is the video I am working from and shows Tycho in the middle of the frame.